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Bokone Bophirima administration tightens belt on municipalities...

Bokone Bophirima provincial administration has strengthened the municipal finance management intervention team based in the provincial Department of Finance, to deal with compliance issues.

Premier Supra Mahumapelo told journalists at a media briefing in Mahikeng yesterday that his administration has taken serious actions to improve municipalities.

“We have evoked section 154 in the Mahikeng and Madibeng Municipalities. In Mahikeng we are focusing on the management of the finances of the Mahikeng municipality while the focus in Madibeng is services of water only.

“In Ditsobotla, Tswaing, Matlosana and Ngaka Modiri Molema we have evoked Sec 139 of the constitution in those municipalities. Since the intervention, there has been a big improvement, for example, payment of services by Matlosana Municipality has improved. Eskom is happy and they have given us a letter to that effect,” said Mahumapelo.

Mahumapelo also said that the Province received a positive report from Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs Department as well as Water and Sanitation Department about the improvement in Madibeng.

“The reports indicate that the Municipal Infrastructure Grant spending relating to water has improved from 20 percent to about 49 percent.

“Ditsobotla has also improved with regard to revenue collection which was below 30 percent and they are now at above 65 percent.”

He said they were also receiving monthly reports on the performance of municipalities, which indicate that there were huge improvements as far performance monitoring is concerned, saying that it was very clear that the interventions were working and that this would certainly lead to satisfactory audit results.

Mahumapelo also clarified the issue concerning audit results that were recently reported.

He explained those audits were in fact the audits for the 2014/2015 financial year.

“People think that those audits were for this financial year. The fifth administration started tackling problems within local government in the financial year 2015/2016, the result of which you will only start seeing in the audit results coming next year.

“The results that you see now are the results for the interventions done by the fourth administration, not the current administration,” said Mahumapelo.